Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday February 05, 2014 @08:09PM
from the please-don't-be-grandstanding dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "The author of the Patriot Act has warned that the legal justification for the NSA's wholesale domestic surveillance program will disappear next summer if the White House doesn't restrict the way the NSA uses its power. Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed unless the White House changes the shocking scale of the surveillance programs for which the National Security Administration uses the authorization, according to James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), an original author of the Patriot Act and its two reauthorizations, stated Washington insider-news source The Hill. 'Unless Section 215 gets fixed, you, Mr. Cole, and the intelligence community will get absolutely nothing, because I am confident there are not the votes in this Congress to reauthorize it,' Sensenbrenner warned Deputy Attorney General James Cole during the Feb. 4 hearing. Provisions of Section 215, which allows the NSA to collect metadata about phone calls made within the U.S., give the government a 'very useful tool' to track connections among Americans that might be relevant to counterterrorism investigations, Cole told the House Judiciary Committee. The scale of the surveillance and lengths to which the NSA has pushed its limits was a "shock" according to Sensenbrenner, who also wrote the USA Freedom Act, a bill to restrict the scope of both Section 215 and the NSA programs, which has attracted 130 co-sponsors. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has sponsored a similar bill in the Senate."

I did before I came here, every single one of the "beta sucks" stories, just posted a "beta sucks"/. journal, and sent them an email informing them that when classic is gone, so will I be.

I suspect all that will be left after classic is gone is APK, ethanol-fueled, the goatse guy, the GNAA guy, and that guy who wants you to clean his PC, Oh, and don't forget Bert, and the other two trolls Bilbo met.

If you took their survey you'll see they know most long-time/. users are outraged. The first question was something like, "Did you know, you can find the classic slashdot layout at a link at the bottom of the page" Answer: No. Next question, "did you find it?". Answer: No (it's buried in a text box). Next question, "Do you have any suggestions for improving the usability of the beta" Answer: Go back to classic Slashdot by default. Etc., etc.,
They know the beta's shit and don't care because they are going to use the site to phish irregular users into their "Business Intelligence" BS. They don't care to keep us here, they just want the name for the geek-chique with the managers that may think they're hip because they've heard of/. but never actually visited. I hope Taco made a mint on this and the other "editors" as well because they sold out hard -- I knew something was seriously wrong when he jumped ship after so many previous acquisitions....

Just want to add, this is not the voice of the truely concerned slashdot users. But likely being done to detract attention from the more sensible posts about classic slashdot. If posts like these are going to dominate the comments then the true reason for the other slashdot site will be silenced.

Thank you for your concerns! I am not sure if you read my post. My dear son - and also my daughter - they both died! The Slashdot Beta was clearly at fault! It was confirmed scientifically by autopsy and also by investigation of the suicide note my dear son left.

Please, I want no other children to get hurt by the Beta. If even this has small chance of working - it will be worth it.

If Slashdot didn't die the LAST three or four times they revamped the site (no matter how much everyone knew it would), it sure as hell won't die with this one.

Each of the last times, they made some things better and some things worse, and they fixed the worst regressions before they forced everyone to move to the new version. Now, they have made the site basically unusable. I've been here for about 10 years and was in the top 5 most active commenters for a couple of quarters of that, and I'm still no on beta. If I do get forced to move to beta, then goodbye Slashdot.

Agreed. Automatic expiration of laws help weed out old crap, and force lawmakers to *actively* support reauthorization of any bill and thus face any fallout over bills that might have seemed good at the time (no, I do *not* think the "patriot" act was a good thing at a time, but a lot of morons did) but have since proved to be a bad idea.
Bonus: if lawmakers were required (after radically re-arranging the congressional rules) to re-up every single bill, we'd have a *LOT FEWER* bills in total. As long as

That's only useful in a specific case, though, where one piece of legislation is the sole authorization for a government action. That's pretty rare (to the point where I doubt this is even such a case).

For everything else, having an expiration date means that the actual state of the law would change even more than it does now, so everybody has to spend more money and work even harder just to make sure that they're still in compliance with the newly-revised rules that are subtly different that the previous rules, because the politicians wanted to look like they were actively improving things.

Similarly, the increased volatility of the law means that legal precedent is also more volatile, so the cost of a court case gets worse as there's more room to argue about how a rule's expiration affects previous judgments. While a criminal case is waiting for the court to settle, the legality of the alleged crime could even change, especially if it's politically beneficial for the legislators to override the judicial branch.

Mandatory expiration dates for legislation fall into the large category of "ideas that cause more problems than they solve".

> Mandatory expiration dates for legislation fall into the large category of "ideas that cause more problems than they solve".

By raw numbers, perhaps. But the problems that they solve are so large and pervasive that they're worth considering. The sheer bulk of existing legal codes, dating back to the Constitution itself, makes sensible analysis of existing law infeasible for even a reasonable legal researcher.

That said, the alleged impermanence of a bill can be used as a way of justifying something we would normally object to, and renewals of those bills are lower pressure because they aren't changing the law.

It may make sense to have an automatic expiration on bills like the PATRIOT ACT, but as a general rule for law that would result in complete chaos.

Actually: I would favor a constitutional requirement, that every new tax, revenue bill, regulation, OR grant of rights to any government entity has to be written so that the bill must be re-authorized or automatically expire by the house a minimum of three times, no sooner than 2 years after the original bill was passed, no longer than 6 years, AND
at least 3 of the required re-authorizations separated by a minimum of 14 months.

That way, if the current session of congress does something stupid --- the NEXT congress has to continue to support it after the next two elections, OR the default is that the new experimental law goes away.

It may make sense to have an automatic expiration on bills like the PATRIOT ACT, but as a general rule for law that would result in complete chaos.

Actually: I would favor a constitutional requirement, that every new tax, revenue bill, regulation, OR grant of rights to any government entity has to be written so that the bill must be re-authorized or automatically expire by the house a minimum of three times, no sooner than 2 years after the original bill was passed, no longer than 6 years, ANDat least 3 of the required re-authorizations separated by a minimum of 14 months.

That way, if the current session of congress does something stupid --- the NEXT congress has to continue to support it after the next two elections, OR the default is that the new experimental law goes away.

You mean like George W. putting patriot act in place and Obama renewing it?

It may make sense to have an automatic expiration on bills like the PATRIOT ACT, but as a general rule for law that would result in complete chaos. Good God, we would never get anything done if we had to rehash out **EVERYTHING** every 5, 10 or 20 years.

I think that would be a great idea for exactly that reason. It would create a limit on how big the active body of law could get. That would be a good thing. You could create a system where laws could get a longer term if, for example, they were put to a public vote.

And this is why it can be smart to put time limits on bills, even if you think they are a good idea at the time. In that sense, the original authors of the Patriot Act were smart.

This will be something like the third re-authorization [wikipedia.org]. (It expired piecemeal, making it easier to re-authorize it piecemeal).

We not only need sunset into bills, we need to require an ever increasing majority to re-authorize these laws.(As well as (nearly) unanimous consent to lower those requirements.)

You can bet that at the time grows near, there will be an "incident" that just "happens" to come along which will have the usual useful idiots demanding more protection, and tighter scrutiny. The drumbeat of fear will be revved up again. Someone will put forth minor meaningless tweaks and tell us the problem is solved. Opponents will be vilified and demonized in the press, mistresses will surface. You name it. Its not like we haven't seen this before.

And we need to enact penalties for judges that fail to uphold their oath of office.

I have some serious doubts that the "drumbeat of fear" ever really existed in the first place. Opinion polls are worthless and depending on who shapes the questions can be spun by both sides of the argument. It would be great if the polling firms were required to provide the detailed methodologies being used to reach their conclusions. Using relatively small sample sizes and then extrapolating and applying the results against 350 million citizens requires some details to test the accuracy of the results.

I have thought that some kind of third legislative branch, whose only power was to rescind laws older than 2 or 3 years, would be a useful check and balance on the current system, which seems only capable of expanding the size of the law. This branch too, would probably need some checks and balances.

Pardon me for not leading with a negative comment on Slashdot Beta (if I did comment it would be highly negative) but, let's stay on topic. It will make zero difference if the NSA has a "legal" basis or not. The govt will simply assert the president's "right" or power to "defend the country" and which court is going to say no to that?

Section 215 of the Patriot Act will expire during the summer of 2015 and will not be renewed

Its time to put this experiment to bed. Like prohibition, which lasted 13 years, the Patriot act (now 13 years old), and damage it has caused needs to be rolled back. Not just Section 215, but other major portions of the act as well.

We are not safer now. We are simply less free now. It has not prevented terrorist attacks, either here or abroad. Boarder security continues to be a utter joke, and secrecy provisions are the antithesis of our supposed freedoms.

Its probably time to start yanking your congressman's chain. Its time to point out that the simple fact we are not asleep any more is basically all that is needed, and all that was ever needed. Its time to point out that 13 years of lies and secrecy is enough. Its time for them to stop carrying the governments message to their constituents, and start carrying their constituents message to the government.

Do I expect this to be successful? No. Not as long as a single one of those congressmen were in office for the initial passing, or the prior re-authorizations. They are too heavily invested in the act, and the administration has too much control over them.

Time to clean house. Stop fearing your district's loss of seniority by electing new people. Vote them all out. If we do it piece meal, career bureaucrats and career politicians will just co-opt the new members. Remove the leverage.

Stop fearing your district's loss of seniority by electing new people. Vote them all out. If we do it piece meal, career bureaucrats and career politicians will just co-opt the new members. Remove the leverage.

All that will do is make the next batch of puppets cheaper to own. Until corporations are muzzled, nothing will change.

The US doesn't have a Left/Right, (R)/(D) problem as much as it simply has grave, ongoing, massive and broad civil rights violations being committed by the government against the entire population under both major political parties.

If the government can be reined-in and brought back under the people's control and end the massive corruption, then corporations and banks, etc would also be brought under control, once you have a government that will actually prosecute corporations/banks/financial institutions and their heads who violate the law, and without any favoritism.

I believe that two of the things that *must* be included in any proposed solution for it to have any credibility whatsoever are term limits for all in Congress to end "career politicians" and strict rules with criminal penalties for going from a government post/office/position into a private sector job/position for any entity over which/whom you had power/influence, in order to stop the revolving-door corruption in D.C.

"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason." - Mark Twain

Its time to put this experiment to bed. Like prohibition, which lasted 13 years, the Patriot act (now 13 years old), and damage it has caused needs to be rolled back. Not just Section 215, but other major portions of the act as well.

Like Cointelpro, they'll just rename and reshuffle the programs while still doing exactly what they want. You can't reveal they're back at it without committing a felony after all...

Day 1: It wouldn't stop, the redirecting. At first I thought it was malware. Had my first drink in a long time.

Day 2: Barely had the strength to carry on as the BETA REDIRECTIONS continue.. trying not to talk to hallucinations at the bar and in the bathroom which laugh at me about these redirections.

Day 3: Discovered the BETA redirections were random, and while at first they looked somewhat usable, when I looked at me and my monitor screen in the mirror, a horrible woman with flesh hanging off of her body looked back, trying to lead me into a dance as the word BETA appeared across her rancid breasts.

Day 4: These BETA corridors go on FOREVER! On the plus side, I've taken up disassembling vehicles to corner this BETA beast and sacrifice myself rather than lead others to discovering it. I ate some red snow.

Day 5: Finding it harder to concentrate. I've ate some more of the red snow. The taste is starting to grow on me.

Day 6: This typewriter is the only entertainment I have, apart from throwing things at the walls, trying to get some response from the BETA which is now taking over my mind.

Day 8: The hallucinations are actually real! Would you believe it? They have offered to help me if I agree to work for them. I'm thinking about patenting this delicious red snow, the taste is unreal!

Day 9: Having black out sessions where I cannot remember large passings of time. Found some makeup, thought I'd paint a joker smile on my face to amuse the people only I can see!

Day 10: Productive today, part of what I wrote for my new screenplay:

I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!I cannot opt out of Slas

Actor Maximilian Schell died last week. He played the defence lawyer in Judgement at Nuremberg. It's a film about the trial of judges who were around before Hitler came to power and stayed on rather than resign. It's a great, great, film. Here's a bit of Spenser Tracey's verdict at the end:

'There are those in our own country, too...who today speak of the protection of country...of survival. A decision must be made in the life of every nation...at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy...to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. The answer to that is: Survival as what? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult.'

The trouble is, there is no practical existential threat from Al Qaeda. There is no unified command structure amongst the Muslim nations - many of which have the same ethno-linguistic-political-economic divisions that have the western nations bickering all of the time. They have no army. No navy. No air force. They are not a fundamental threat to the west and the overreach of this sector of government needs to be brought back into perspective.

The trouble is, there is no practical existential threat from Al Qaeda.

This can't be reiterated enough. The response to 9/11 was completely out of proportion to the actual threat posed by the perpetrators. GWB said they hate us for our freedom so what do we do? We turn around and reduce our freedom. What kind of sense does that make?

It can be. We mustn't make this issue about the efficacy of the programs, but about freedom. Mentioning that the programs are ineffective is fine, but we must make it clear that they would be unacceptable even if they worked.

It makes sense if you realize Al Qaeda was never the real enemy. It was just a very convenient excuse for the government to grab more power. And it worked. The majority of people are sheep and took it hook line and sinker. It's all straight from Orwell's 1984. Give them a great war to distract them from their current troubles and the failure of the government to do anything about it so the politicians can keep stuffing their pockets and their friends pockets.

And no I'm not defending the NSA. I think they have gone way to far. However, I do believe that radical islam is a threat that must be exterminated just as surely as Naziism and the radical Shinto warrior sect that controlled Japan.

Radical anything needs to be controlled and sidelined. Not exterminated. In many nations immigrants don't melt into the culture anymore, they're insular. The populus needs education. The "right to free speech" isn't to criticize your fellow man but to critiized and call out abuses w/in the governement. To say that the minority can't abuse everyone else; no beating your SO. Do want you want in the privacy of your home. but you can't dictate or pass laws what I do in public.

I'm pretty sure we instigated the Japanese bombing of Pearl. For fuck sakes in the first quarter of 1941 Roosevelt moved the Pacific fleet to Pearl, began a military buildup in the Philippines, and then followed that up in July by cutting off Japans oil supply.

..then in December of that year, we were surprised that Japan attacked? No. We expected it, because we instigated it. We just didn't expect it to be Pearl. We expected it to be the Philippines.

Dice, I am protesting the beta site. I will not follow any links from a beta redirect and I will not participate in any meaningful discussion.

Your new Slashdot design is hideous. The comment layout is an abomination which is/.'s strong point, its why we come here. This isn't twitter or Facebook, we come here to get away from that. Please abandon your attempts to cash in on this site, you will loose more members then you will ever hope to attract with your new and unimproved design.

Fellow/.'ers, join me in this protest. Do not post a comment related to a beta redirect article or click any links. Instead, post a comment in protest of the beta design.

So, what is Congress going to do? Oh, I know. They'll allow this law to "time out" - a law that doesn't allow this, anyway - and then it'll be even more illegal! Yes, it'll be so illegal that......... what? Eric Holder will finally get off his ass and investigate?

Here's what makes this stop. Rather than saying "you no longer have statutory authority to do _______" (which they don't have now, anyway, but stick with me) we need to write a simple law that says "the government may not do ______, and if the

Is anyone going to address the NSA surveillance issue behind the law? It's pretty well established that they're sucking up every possible piece of information because their world view is based in maximum paranoia (if the other guys are capable of doing this, they're probably doing this). Yet their info-vacuum yields little to no results. If we judged their potential for abuse like they judge the world's threats, there would be no NSA. So what kind of intelligent intelligence agency do we rebuild the NSA

With third party doctrine relied upon almost exclusively to produce with little or no showing what everyone in modern society assumes and thinks to be their property as constitutional basis to legitimize what otherwise would be constitutionally illegitimate what really could one expect legal effect of the patriot act going away to be?

The linchpin seems to be the third party doctrine you pull that patriot act, stored communications act and all manner of accumulated doublespeak becomes unconstitutional overni

I'm willing to burn my not-inconsiderable karma on this, the beta really destroys the flow of what I actually come here for - the discussion! If it becomes mandatory it'll kill a site that has been my favorite place on the web for a long, long time

It's never too late to do the right thing. Please reconsider killing classic. It's instantly recognizable as Slashdot. A "trademark" of Slashdot if you will. It is a big reason why people come here to comment and lurk. It is loved. FFS, beta is the New Coke!

Has anyone tried to email the editors directly to see if the can talk some since into their DICE pointy haired boss's or maybe we could find the email of the DICE PHB responsible and we could slashdot his inbox...

The editors know... we made it clear in the beta announcement thread and at least one editor said he was going to bubble it to the top of the foodchain. This is a topdown order and going to straight-up KILL slashdot. I don't think DICE even cares, and apparently neither do the editors as their still drawing paychecks. This is some serious shit; I don't know how things went down but I'd like to think Taco had the integrity to leave when he knew which way the ship would be going -- maybe he had family concerns financially. But the others, I feel bad for them, but damn, goddamn indeed, they need to stage a revolt because the users of/. are about to if this shit is forced down our throats....

I don't. Those of us who've been around for a while remember when the current batch of editors came onboard, and compared to the original crew they're useless; about as effective at editing as patent examiners are at examining patents.

I used to have most of them filtered out, but unfortunately if I kept those filters Slashdot would be (more) content-free.

There is literally *not one single thing* that works in any manner that can even begin to approach what is commonly referred to as "usability". That in and of itself is constructive criticism because it would be impossible to enumerate every problem with the new site.

The beta doesn't add any useful new features. All it does is remove them and severely fucks up the best part of this site: the commenting and moderation system. If the commenting system goes out the window, why would I come here? The stories are always several days or a week old, the editors are terrible at their job, and all of the actual articles are on other sites I could browse instead.

The Republican bloc is unlikely to do anything that would curb military or intelligence related activities.

Unless there's a Democrat running those intelligence related activities. Then there's actually a good chance.

No. Unfettered spying ^B^B^B^B^B^B intelligence gathering is the most bipartisan issue there is. Repubs and Democrats have both controlled houses of Congress with the other party in the White House. Have they actually done anything, even to score political points? No. No, they haven't. Will they? No. No, they won't. And no, voting Ron Paul won't fix it either -- sorry guys. Basing the whole thing on the promise and integrity of one guy doesn't work if there's no one to hold him accountable. Until Congress i

The Republican bloc is unlikely to do anything that would curb military or intelligence related activities.

You haven't been paying attention. The Republicans are up in arms over this, with the RNC calling the NSAs activities straight up unconstitutional and calling for their end with no mention of terrorism nor other weasel wording.

You've confused me. How have you refuted what I said? Republicans passed the bill. The only reason they're against it now is because they believe that they can pin it on Obama. These are true things. What you seem to be pointing out now, what is also true, is that Democrats passed it too. So what?

If you want to turn this into partisan dick wagging, I'll point out that the largest number of opponents of the bill and it's extensions, both in quantity and proportionally, have been Democrats. The most recent

On Saturday, February 27, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation that would temporarily extend for one year three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act that had been set to expire:Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

Its useful divisive idiots like you that keep trying to make this a partisan issue rather than getting you own party to actually READ the constitution.

They just don't have anyone with enough brains to understand THEY HAVE TO HAVE A REAL REASON. Their base is even worse, comprised of complete fucking idiots and think they can impeach someone just because they disagree with him.

Article 2, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Even more on point, you may want to go back to the Constitution and reread it if you're going to be basing your argument off it:

Article 1, Section 3:

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

They just don't have anyone with enough brains to understand THEY HAVE TO HAVE A REAL REASON.

Correct... "I have a pen and a phone" implies a willingness to sign an unlawful order; that is, to say, an order to a law enforcement body, to begin or continue conducting activities that are in violation of the constitution, or unlawful.

It is a matter exclusively for the judgement of the House, as to make the finding of law whether this is such a high crime as to warrant articles of impeachment

The Republicans have been looking for an excuse to impeach President Obama that would pass the laugh test. If Obama openly defied a shutdown of surveillance programs, that would give them not only a good reason, but one that might actually have some bipartisan support.

What I think is more likely is that the NSA would keep operating the way they are anyway, with or without Presidential or Congressional authorization. Short of completely de-fundin

The executive branch is accountable to the legislative. The whole checks and balances thing. If Mr. President does decide to continue this surveillance on executive order, it could very well get him impeached (repubs are looking for a reason, and this is would be a damn good reason).

What about all the other Democrats that pushed through the last reauthorization?

The scale of the surveillance and lengths to which the NSA has pushed its limits was a "shock" according to Sensenbrenner, who also wrote the USA Freedom Act, a bill to restrict the scope of both Section 215 and the NSA programs, which has attracted 130 co-sponsors.

The author of the Patriot act has seen the light, and yet you do nothing but call him names?

Small point, you meant to say Minnesota's 6th district [wikipedia.org] which is stuck on crazy, not Minnesota's 5th District [wikipedia.org] who elected the first Muslim to serve in the house of representatives in the form of Keith Ellison. The two districts are close geographically, but very far apart politically.